Reported damage to the Lake City High School's roof due to a possible tornado touchdown May 10.
(Photo: Trevor Cameron/Special to the Register)

When bad weather strikes will the sirens sound?Published in the Des Moines Register: www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/2016/05/05/no-regulations-outdoor-severe-weather-signals/83597580/

As the state braces for its peak tornado months of May and June, how certain can Iowans be that severe weather sirens intended to help keep them safe are ready and in proper working condition?

That's because there is no federal or state oversight or regulations regarding the operation and testing of sirens. Iowa communities aren't even required to have sirens. The answer: It varies.

The issue was underscored recently in Johnston, where city officials in March discovered that four of its outdoor sirens were inoperable because of an issue with radio transmissions sent by Polk County to trigger the devices. The city later discovered that the same problem also disabled its remaining four sirens.

The problems, which have since been fixed, were not announced publicly until a month later, after severe weather was in the forecast. A city spokeswoman said residents would have been alerted in other ways had there been a threat of dangerous storms in the interim.

Emergency management officials agree that sirens are an important part of the state's severe weather warning system, but they are primarily intended to alert Iowans working or recreating outdoors of potentially dangerous storms approaching.

They stress that sirens are far from the only tool available, and they urge Iowans to rely on a variety of severe weather alerts, including those delivered by radio and television broadcasts, online sites, cellphones and portable weather radios.

There were 142 tornadoes reported in Iowa from 2013 through 2015, according to data gathered by the National Weather Service. Seventy-seven of those happened in May and June, including two last year that resulted in four deaths.

"You’ll probably find that it’s done differently," Darrell Knecht, president of the Iowa Emergency Management Association, said of siren use and testing procedures. "There’s not a standard practice across the state. … There’s no law that says, 'thou shalt do it' at a certain time or date.”

Knecht's group, which is made up of local, county and state emergency managers, provides best practices guidelines that communities can use. Among them are when to use a siren and for which types of weather situations. They also stress the importance of consistency and avoiding overuse of sirens, which can confuse people or result in ignored warnings.

'Very crude device'A.J. Mumm, director of Polk County Emergency Management, is concerned that some residents may rely too much on the sirens.“It is a very crude device that just makes a loud noise to get people’s attention,” Mumm said. “They should go and seek further information.”

Mumm said Polk County in 2009 instituted a policy to improve its outdoor severe weather warning system and become more consistent regarding when the sirens are tested and used. The county has 135 sirens, and four to five are typically found inoperable during annual spring testing, he said.

“By having a system that was previously uncoordinated, there wasn’t a standard way of testing the sirens, and it was confusing the public,” Mumm said.

While no statewide mandate requires it, many larger counties, such as Linn and Johnson, have implemented policies similar to those used in Polk County.

“If you’re going to have it, you should have a standard way of using it, so the public understands how it works in whatever jurisdiction,” Mumm said.

Cost can be a factorSmaller, more rural counties tended to be more prone to tornadoes over the past three years, according to National Weather Service data.

From 2013 to 2015, Madison, Dallas and Sioux counties experienced the most tornadoes, totaling 20 between them. By comparison, four combined occurred in Polk, Linn and Johnson counties.

And some of those areas most frequently hit by twisters face special challenges in obtaining and using outdoor severe weather warning systems. Chief among them is cost.

A new, automated outdoor siren can cost more than $20,000, forcing communities to rely on outdated equipment or do without them entirely. That can be a problem in areas with spotty Internet service or where homes rely primarily on satellite dishes, which can go out during storms.

Madison County led the state with nine tornadoes since 2013. The eight towns near where those twisters touched down have sirens, but the devices range in age. East Peru's siren is manually operated. The other seven towns have sirens that can be operated from the Sheriff's Office. There is consistent, monthly countywide siren testing.

"Some of the communities are very proactive with it," said Todd Brown, director of Madison County Emergency Management. "Others, it’s all they can do to afford a siren, let alone a new siren."

As technology advances, Brown said, he sees more people using their cellphones for an alert.

Sioux County, which has had six tornadoes in recent years, also conducts coordinated testing in its 13 towns with sirens. Most are operated through the sheriff's office or from fire stations, but a few towns operate sirens manually.

Residents are also encouraged to sign up for Nixle, an Internet-based system that sends email or text alerts.

"Realistically, that’s probably our best notification tool," said Nate Huizenga, Sioux County Emergency Management director. "We’ve used it for six or seven years now. We’ve had really good luck with it."

Dallas County, home to five recent tornadoes, is a mix of rural and urban communities. That means it needs a variety of strategies to warn its residents of approaching severe weather, officials say.

Larger cities, such as West Des Moines and Waukee, follow the same policies deployed in Polk County, including testing every month. But Barry Halling,Dallas County's emergency management coordinator, said it is up to each town to decide how to test and operate its sirens.

Each city has at least one siren, but the county doesn’t provide sirens for the 24 townships within its borders.

Halling said sirens are not a necessity in less-populated areas.

“There are enough devices like a cellphone app that there’s no way, unless you were completely oblivious to what’s going on around you, that you shouldn’t know a storm is coming,” Halling said. “The rural people, especially the farm folk, have more awareness of those things than people in the city.”

'No perfect thing'Officials in Iowa communities that have experienced deadly tornadoes say they see value in the sirens. They would like to see more state and federal assistance to help smaller towns obtain or update such systems.

In Agency, a small southeast Iowa town, two residents were killed by a tornado in 2001.

That storm formed so quickly that the town's volunteer Fire Department didn't have time to sound its antiquated manual siren, which could only be activated by an outdoor hand crank. The nearly 70-year-old siren was retired a little over a year ago, after the town landed a $22,000 grant from Wapello County to purchase a new, automated siren.

“The state has constantly mandated different types of storm training for each of these emergency responders,” said Agency Fire Chief Mike Holcomb. “Here we are, jumping through the hoops and learning what a tornado looks like … but when we come down and needed the funding for the siren, it wasn’t there. We had to go through a Wapello branch.”

In Parkersburg, a new siren was activated just two days before a tornado ripped through town in 2008, killing seven people. The siren was damaged in the storm but was credited with savings lives.

“Eventually, the money will all get spent and we won’t get any more money, until we get another disaster,” Bond said.

Counties can apply for funding from the program, but the Legislature does not set aside money for sirens, Bond said. Towns also can seek country grants, as Agency did.

John Benson, spokesperson for Iowa Homeland Security & Emergency Management, said one of the biggest challenges facing small towns is the age of the sirens. Many of them were installed in the 1950s and 1960s as civil defense sirens, and it’s difficult to find parts to fix them.

​“It’s another way of reaching the public, because there’s no perfect thing that solves the problem,” Benson said.